Conference & Publication Calls for Papers

Queering Migrations on Screen

Deadline: May 15, 2006

A one-day conference, to be held at the Institute of Germanic & Romance
Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London

*Date: **Friday 13 October 2006***

The aim of this conference is to look at the phenomenon of migration in
a range of national cinemas from the perspective of queer theory.

The idea behind the project is that constructions of identity are
mobile, but don�t necessarily travel well. The process of migration cuts
across national spaces. It also impacts on formations of gender and
sexuality that consolidate or contest the nation.
Queer theory may prove useful in charting this process because it is
attentive to the mechanisms through which identities are produced and
questions rather than relies on normative categories of gender and
sexuality. The effects of the experience of migration are political in
that they raise issues to do with racism, citizenship, cultural
integration and assimilation. Yet the representation of that experience
also impacts on the taxonomies of national and gender identity that
cinema has been said to consolidate. The question is whether, and how,
film can offer ways of undoing dominant modes of representation and
spectatorship as it charts movements across and between spaces and
identities.

Submissions are invited from (but not limited to) the fields of Film
Studies, Queer Theory, Migration and Cultural Studies; interdisciplinary
methodological perspectives that diversify the understanding of the
subject area are especially encouraged. Papers on other visual media,
especially television and video art are also welcome. We aim to publish
a selection of papers from the conference either as an edited volume or
as a special issue of a journal.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: *15 May 2006*

Please email proposals (200 words) along with a short C.V.
simultaneously to: